The landslide that struck Besinda Village in Sankhuwasabha on Sunday displaced 73 households. Four people were rescued alive, while 11 had gone missing. But six days since the disaster, not a single missing person has been discovered and the search operation to locate the missing is still ongoing.

The search operation is being carried out jointly by personnel from the Nepal Police, Armed Police Force and Nepal Army. According to Jiwan Prasad Acharya, chief district officer, the team has been searching for the missing in the landslide debris but with no success. The search team from Thursday has started focusing on Sisuwakhola, the stream that runs beneath the village that was washed away. A team of about 60 security personnel is involved in the search operation.

“The team couldn’t locate a single missing person after digging up the debris, so we now suspect that the bodies might have been swept to the stream,” Acharya said. “But even the search around the stream has yielded no result.”

Acharya added that the search operation will continue for a few more days.

Meanwhile, the displaced survivors have been moved to Chitre Village, which lies at a walking distance of an hour and a half from Besinda, in the aftermath of the disaster. On Friday, as many as 110 survivors were further relocated to Budhabare town, as Chitre Village itself is at risk of a landslide, according to Ram Bahadur Kulung, chair of Silichong Rural Municipality. The rest of the survivors are still housed at the makeshift shelter in Chitre.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident, bad weather had hampered rescue efforts in the remote village that lies a day’s walk away from the district headquarters, Khandbari.